Sunday, 27 May 2007

a painting of Maria Papadimitriou's project will be shown at the Blow de la Barra stand in Artathina

Maria Over Mount AthosBy Jennifer Allen

Maria Over Mount AthosA hot air balloon floats silently over Mount Athos... Not just any balloon but one carrying an image of Maria's face. Much to the surprise of the monks living on the peninsula, the face does not belong to the Blessed Virgin Mary but to the artist Maria Papadimitriou. With this visitation from above, Papadimitriou questions the centuries-long ban that bars women from visiting Mount Athos to see its cultural and natural treasures.

HistoryOver 1000 years ago, the Byzantine Orthodox Church ruled that the monasteries on Mount Athos should worship the Virgin Mary, who is said to have taken refuge on the mountain during a storm. To eliminate rivals for the monks' attention, all females - including animals - were banned from the Athonite peninsula. While Mount Athos is famed for its Byzantine icons of the Virgin, her face is the only female countenance to adorn the monastary walls since all images of other women were also prohibited. Apart from the Virgin, the only other females to grace the peninsula are birds.

TodayNothing has changed since 1060 A.D.: All women, images of women and female animals still remain absent. Officially known as the Regime of Aghion Oros, Mount Athos is a self-governed monastic republic whose autonomy is protected by Greece and guaranteed by the Greek constitution. The twenty Holy Monasteries are under the spiritual jurisdiction of the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, which appears to have more say in Athonite affairs than Greece itself. Although Greece provides public services, including police and customs, the Greek governor of Mount Athos has only an advisory role and reports to the Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs. While Mount Athos can turn away women at its borders, it has the right to give Greek citizenship to foreigners who dedicate themselves to a monastic life on the peninsula.

EU FundingWhen Greece joined the European Union in 1981, Mount Athos was specifically excluded from the jurisdiction of EU equality legislation, although the monasteries were not excluded from applying for EU funding. By 1998, the EU had poured 23.4 million euro directly into the monasteries to conserve and to restore their buildings and cultural heritage. While the EU funds have been legitimated on the basis of the monasteries' "monuments of exceptional importance in Europe," many Europeans who supplied these funds - European women taxpayers - have no right to see the monuments, let alone walk on the peninsula.

Light as AirMaria Papadimitriou's hot air balloon is a light intervention that openly challenges Athonite tradition without breaking Greek laws. The hot air balloon, bearing an iconographic image of the artist's face, recalls the monks' veneration of the Virgin Mary's face on auratic icons. Papadimitriou also takes her cue from the birds, approaching the peninsula by air, albeit without landing. Both appearance and apparition, her hot air balloon will create a highly-visible image that can be seen from afar for one entire day: not only by monks and men on Mount Athos but also by spectators in boats and planes circling the peninsula. Given the balloon's spectacular nature and the political implications of a religious ban on women, the event is sure to gain attention from the international media as a non-violent action against gender discrimination.

Moving BordersIn terms Papadimitriou's oeuvre, the hot air balloon project is yet another attempt to undo the border controls that link mobility with identity. Defying the passport control, Papadimitriou has used aesthetic forms - from music to hotel rooms - that promote nomadic, ephemeral and collective ways of experiencing identity. It is no surprise that her Autonomous Temporary Museum for All (T.A.M.A.) centered upon a Roma community living a semi-nomadic life at the edges of Athens. At Mount Athos, Papadimitriou will take on yet another border control with a moving image of Maria: visible to everyone, regardless of gender.

Saturday, 26 May 2007

Cloudis a House from the series Neen Homes. The shape of the cloud is derived from whywashesad.com, while the form is based on a model of house that I grew up surrounded by: The domino frame on pilotis, in its mediterranean, post-modernist decadence of anarchic construction and casual, haphazard habitation. This is one of the drafts for the house for 2, made of a concrete cloud.http://angelidakis.comhttp://angelidakis.com/_PAGES/CloudHouse.htmhttp://www.whywashesad.com/

And special guests:Maria PapidimitriouAndreas AngelidakisAngelo Plessas

Blow de la Barra participates in the Contemporary Club Section:Invited by The Breeder Gallery 10 emerging international galleries will present their artists in a special section entitled Contemporary Club, participating in this year’s edition of artathina:

contents:reader’s letters. brutalist de-tropicalization by jean-michel wickerreligion. no possesions, no violence, no sex... by karl holmqvistportrait. pepe rojashome improvement. the technical vocabulary of the interior decorator. a play by los super eleganteshousing and urbanism. ciudad nezahualcoyotlkitchen and swimwear. dimitris gets comfortable after a swimfashion. george and stathis dress in blacknightlife. the eagle, madrid

Tuesday, 22 May 2007

An exhibition, with Loris Gréaud and Arnaud Michniak, by Mathieu Copeland

Hong Kong, Hong Kong City Hall, 14th of May - 27th of May 2007 - opening the 15th of May, 18.30

The exhibition appears as a moment frozen in time. A place where the viewers constantly celebrate the opening of an exhibition in a gallery whose size is gradually reduced, and that in turn reduces the view over the city.

The first movement of the exhibition comes with the present DVD that acts as a catalogue. Widely available, it features two new-commissioned films by Loris Gréaud and Arnaud Michniak both filmed in Hong Kong. The film ‘Celador, un goût d’illusion’ by Loris Gréaud is an advertising for a candy that taste of illusion. The film by Arnaud Michniak “Sound take in a hospital” focuses on arrested moments in the midst of a city in constant movement.

The exhibition at the Hong Kong City Hall appears minimal, if not empty. The films realised for the exhibition are shown sporadically throughout the exhibition. Our experience in the gallery is somehow what we are told of these works. There, everything remains, but nothing is left. Nothing seems to happen. The only element that evolves throughout the exhibition is, paradoxically, the space itself. The art is simply everything else.

Taking part in a French television game called 'Tournez Manège' (The Dating Game) in 1993, Parisian artist Matthieu Laurette first claimed to be a multimedia artist to the show's host in front of the audience. Since then, Laurette has used various strategies to explore the relationships between conceptual art, Pop art, institutional critique, and contemporary society, and to change the contexts of presentation and representation. In his recent series 'Apparitions/Appearances' (2004-06), the artist appeared among the on-the-street audiences of CBS's 'The Early Show' and NBC's 'The Today Show', holding up his own signs. Laurette also scrutinizes the social dynamic of spectacle and celebrity. 'Déjà vu' Project, 'The International Look-alike Convention' consists of an ongoing series of performances at art-world openings and special events (Centre Pompidou, Paris, 2000; Dia Art Foundation, New York, 2004) where star look-alikes are mixed in with the audience. In 'What Do They Wear At Frieze Art Fair?' (2005), various fashion experts comment on visitors and art dealers and their relationship with fashion rather than on the art itself. Laurette presents and discusses these and other recent projects. Program 95 min.

Dedicated to experimentation with cinematic form and content, MediaScope presents emerging and recognized artists who discuss their work with the audience. The program explores filmmaking and videomaking, as well as Web-based, installation, and digital art practices.

20 years after his death, the legacy of Andy Warhol lives on through the work of today’s contemporary artists and cultural instigators.

Having identified direct parallels between Dazed & Confused Magazine and the world of Warhol, BALTIC has invited Dazed & Confused to nominate 10 key multimedia artists to exhibit who they feel have a specific link to a post-Warholian discourse.This group show features the work of the artists:

Covering visual art, photography, performance and new media, the artists explore how some of the key themes that Warhol introduced are being further questioned, subverted and investigated in today’s evolving creative landscape.

Sunday, 13 May 2007

The first and most memorable cultural experience for a child can often be a visit to a museum of natural history. Whale bones, dinosaur skeletons, archaeological objects and wax figures leave long lasting impressions.

Artists including Maurizio Cattelan, Miguel Calderon, Oleh Kulik and Tony Matelli examine and incorporate elements of natural history in this spectacular, humorous and sometimes disturbing group show. They present us with an exhibition which takes us on a bizarre tour of man’s recreation of the natural environment.

In transforming BALTIC’s Level 4 gallery space into an absurd cabinet of curiosities, they provide us not only with a commentary upon the past but also comment upon the future of the human species.http://www.balticmill.com/

Saturday, 12 May 2007

MARJETICA POTRČ RURAL STUDIO: THE LUCY HOUSE TORNADO SHELTER APRIL 27, 2007Galerie Nordenhake is very pleased to present an exhibition by the Slovenian artist Marjetica Potrč, an architect turned artist who works at the interface of art, architecture and social science, exploring local innovations in the built environment. For the exhibition, Potrč has installed a site-specific structure that evolved from her case study of the Lucy House in Greensbro, Alabama, designed by the Rural Studio in 2002 for Anderson and Lucy Harris and their three children. Rural Studio is a program founded in 1992 by Samuel Mockbee for architecture students at Auburn University in Hale County, Alabama, one of the poorest regions in the United States. Potrč’s work negotiates with the gaps in knowledge that result when urban planners and architects insist on creating order. Notably, Potrč is interested in what architects and planners cannot predict. Notions such as homelessness, the shantytown, outsider communities, and the role of imagination are united in Potrč’s work with an architecture of immediate, personal response. The ‘Lucy House Tornado Shelter’ is an organic, ‘living’ structure based on the metaphor of the human body’s spontaneous and unplanned behavior. The house includes a built-in tornado shelter topped with a ‘crumpled’ dome. This dome is not the actual shelter; rather, it is protecting the structure underneath. Potrč’s design takes into consideration her work with Buckminster Fuller’s tensegrity domes, which she encountered while at the Burning Man Festival. A tensegrity dome involves a coordination of pressure and release, push and pull. The dome is built by adjoining segments at different angles together so that in the overall structure an equilibrium of push and pull occurs between segments weighed on and those weighing. ‘ Potrč’s study evolved out of her interest in architecture that emphasizes ‘self-reliance’ and ‘individual empowerment.’ This is accomplished through the usage of alternative, environmentally sustainable construction materials, combined with little money and much creativity. She investigates how to improve relations between society and the individual, asking what sort of space is available to us for freedom. Transforming scrap material and ‘junk’ into a solid, sturdy structure, Rural Studio’s work has provided the opportunity for many underprivileged families living in substandard housing to move into a house that is not only a home, but a shelter for the soul. The Lucy House’ unites residential architecture with an emergency provision, the permanent need with the temporary necessity. As with her previous projects, Marjetica Potrč is continuously exploring fundamental human needs: community, safety, and shelter. In addition to the house, Potrč will also exhibit new drawings that are somewhere between an architectural plan and a mental association chart. These drawings give insight into her idiosyncratic process of thinking about urgent problems in urban architecture. http://www.nordenhake.com/

glitter rettilg glitter sister met you in a four poster bed with stools and grass hands playing at my feet, a readymade jumpsuit with fiery wings, landed in my coat pocket and i started to sing, how doth though receive me? with open arms which laugh and chuckle at my paranoia, I hope they do, cause i love you.

feel the power of glitter transcending its own formal boundaries, emerging out the equation's nether end as a sheet of purest noise. before glitter, there were only tears. and they soaked the paper with invisible images that directly burned the pineal eye. after glitter, there was everything. a cascade of possibilities sonically etched onto the backs of eyelids. heard and seen merged. a triumverate implied when combined with imagination. which only you can bring.

Tuesday, 8 May 2007

Isabella Blow at her best during "What Do They Wear At Frieze Art Fair?" a project by Matthieu Laurette in which Isabella gave a guided fashion tour of the fair, Saturday 22 October 2005.Isabella Blow, fashion icon, muse, talent discoverer and true star was born on November 19, 1958.She died on May 7, 2007, aged 48.Long live queen Isabella.

EXHIBITIONS, PROJECTS AND TEXTS BY PLB

ABOUT ME

"At the end of the fifteenth of his 'Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Mankind' Schiller states a paradox and makes a promise. He declares that ‘Man is only completely human when he plays’, and assures us that this paradox is capable ‘of bearing the whole edifice of the art of the beautiful and of the still more difficult art of living’. We could reformulate this thought as follows: there exists a specific sensory experience—the aesthetic—that holds the promise of both a new world of Art and a new life for individuals and the community. There are different ways of coming to terms with this statement and this promise. You can say that they virtually define the ‘aesthetic illusion’ as a device which merely serves to mask the reality that aesthetic judgement is structured by class domination. In my view that is not the most productive approach..." from
Jacques Rancier, 'The Aesthetic Revolution and its Outcomes', New Left Review 14, April-March 2002

SHORT BIO

Pablo León de la Barra is an exhibition maker, independent curator and researcher. He was born in Mexico City in 1972. León de la Barra has a PhD in History and Theories from the Architectural Association, London. He has curated among other exhibitions ‘To Be Political it Has to Look Nice’ (2003) at apexart and Art in General in New York; ‘PR04 Biennale’ (2004, co-curator) in Puerto Rico; ‘George and Dragon at ICA’ (2005) at the ICA-London; ‘Glory Hole’ (2006) at the Architecture Foundation-London; ‘Sueño de Casa Propia’(2007-2008, in collaboration with Maria Ines Rodriguez) at Centre de Art Contemporaine-Geneve, Casa Encendida-Madrid, Casa del Lago-Mexico City, and Cordoba, Spain; ‘This Is Not America’ at Beta Local in San Juan, Puerto Rico (2009); ‘Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas, Yucatan and Elsewhere’, at the CCE in Guatemala (2010); ‘To Know Him Is To Love Him’, Cerith Wyn Evans at Casa Barragan, Mexico City (2010); ‘Incidents of Mirror Travel in Yucatan and Elsewhere’, at Museo Tamayo, Mexico City (2011); 'Bananas is my Business: the Southamerican Way' at Museu Carmen Miranda, Rio de Janeiro (co-curated with Julieta Gonzalez, 2011); 'MicroclimaS' at Kunsthalle Zurich (2012); 'Esquemas para una Oda Tropical', Rio de Janeiro, 2012; 'Marta 'Che' Traba' at Museo La Ene, Buenos Aires (2012); Novo Museo Tropical at Teoretica, San Jose, Costa Rica (2012); Museu Labirinto / Museum of Unlimited Growth, ArtRio, Rio de Janeiro (2012); The Camino Real Arcades, Lima, Peru (2012). PLB has acted as advisor and/or art curator for the following art fairs: Pinta/London (2010-12), Maco/Mexico (2009-1012), Circa/Puerto Rico (2010), La Otra/Bogota (2009), ArteBA/ Buenos Aires (2012), ArtRio/Rio de Janeiro (2011-2013). León de la Barra has written amongst other publications for: Frog/Paris, PinUp/New York, Purple/Paris, Spike/Austria, Tar/Italy, Wallpaper/London, Celeste/Mexico, Tomo/Mexico, Rufino/Mexico, Ramona/Buenos Aires, Metropolis M/Amsterdam, Numero Cero/Puerto Rico. PLB has also written texts for many artists and exhibition catalogues, lectured internationally and participated in many international symposiums where relevant topics to arts, culture and society have been discussed. PLB was co-director of ‘24-7’ an artists-curatorial collective in London from 2002-2005 and artistic director of ‘Blow de la Barra’ in London from 2005-2008. From 2005 to 2012 he was curator of the White Cubicle Gallery in London, a community art space which he also founded. He is also founder of the Novo Museo Tropical, a museum yet to physically exist somewhere in the tropics and curated the First Bienal Tropical in San Juan Puerto Rico (2011). He is also the publisher of Pablo Internacional Editions and editor of his own blog the Centre for the Aesthetic Revolution. He lives and works between London, Mexico City, Los Angeles, Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo, San Juan, Bogota, Lima, Athens, Beirut...